A Harp's Song

ZipZing and Aishin were spending a couple of hours together in "Living Jade Empire" to hunt for more hair, teeth, nails and scales of animals they hadn't collected from yet. Shinichi made a gentle complaint about how he'd rather spend a couple of hours with her in person, but the travel time would have only left them with about half an hour to spend together. Danika could only agree that it was a pity.

A bit later he suggested teasingly, "If you had room for me to sleep at your place, we could have spent a couple of hours before I had to sleep."

His shock was obvious when she replied laughingly, "You could bring over a small futon to keep here I suppose?"

"Would that be ok?" he questioned breathlessly. He was at home and playing on the VR system.

Danika stopped and hovered in place. She pointed out seriously, "If I can't trust you, we probably shouldn't be dating. And since I sleep in the VR-medi pod, it's basically like I have my own room, even though there's only one room. It's not like we'd have to rush into anything just because you slept here?"

Aishin scooped her out of the air and kissed her on the nose. Her wings sparkled pinkly, but she didn't object. "I'm going to show up on your doorstep with a futon next time I've got a few hours free in the evening and don't have to be somewhere before 8am," he promised.

She giggled and pointed out, "I don't have a step in front of my door."

He stuck his tongue out at her.

"It will be fun," she replied.

"Yeah," he agreed happily.

And then they both heard the sound of the harp. The music was beautiful, but it had a strange effect on their characters. They were drawn toward it. They could choose to move slowly, or at an angle to the music, but they couldn't move away or entirely halt their progress.

Somehow, it didn't seem like following the music would lead to anything good. Aishin tried using his random teleport skill, but it only took him closer to the music. He dug in his heels and slowed himself as much as possible.

Danika tried landing and digging her claws into the ground, but after only a second her feet moved against her will and carried her forward again. She eyed a small tree that lay between her and Aishin and suggested, "I could try using my binding string to tie myself to that tree, but I don't know if my string is strong enough to hold me."

Aishin was struggling against the pull of the music and asked, "What if it was and you just kept moving and cut yourself up on it? Come here and let me hold you and try something else?"

Danika stopped fighting and let the music pull ZipZing forward until she caught up to Aishin who snatched her out of the air and triggered a skill that he hadn't used since the goblin event, that she'd noticed. Everything went silent, and he was finally able to stop moving. Danika turned and looked up at his face.

He clutched her awkwardly in one hand and placed a finger against her mouth. Then he frantically accessed his menus, and after a moment she decided that he was writing a message. She pulled up her own list of her familiar's skills, and decided that her guess was right. He'd used silent movement, but if he spoke it would end the effect, and it had probably only affected her because he was holding her.

It wasn't going to last long either. She quickly messaged him as well. His little bat appeared, and took the message from him with a confused appearance. It circled them quickly and delivered the message to her just as she finished hers: "Shouldn't we be running away? We can take turns using it to extend the time?"

His read: "I want to see what's making the music, and then I'll use the skill again and we'll run away if it seems advisable?"

He read hers and raised his eyebrows. She nodded and patted his hand. He reached out with his other hand and adjusted her position so that she was more comfortable and strode forward. A moment later the silence ended, but Danika discovered that as long as Aishin was moving forward, the music wasn't pulling her to move and she could stay in his hands.

She glanced at him again and repressed a laugh. He might be playing an assassin, and she'd never heard him sing either in person or within the game yet, but even without the magical effect the music obviously called to the singer and songwriter. He looked eager to see what was ahead of them.

The scene that greeted them when they arrived was grim. There was no question that they'd arrived either. A player held the beautiful harp with a hopeless expression. Around him lay the dead, the dying, and a few animals still stumbling in slow exhausted circles around the musician.

"Kill me," begged the player named Brannigan Bard. Unsurprisingly his path was also that of a bard. "I can't stop, but I'm pretty sure that if you kill me the harp will stop."

Aishin asked logically, "Hasn't anyone else tried to attack you?"

Brannigan grimaced and replied, "No one can approach closer than the dance circle, but those are throwing knives aren't they?"

As Aishin drew closer, he too began to circle the bard. He nodded.

Danika had an idea and suggested, "Try throwing me at him? If it works, maybe I can silence him and the harp?"

"And then what?" Brannigan asked wearily.

"Then maybe you could just let go of the harp?" Danika suggested.

The bard's fingers were bloody and had been for awhile, because the blood soaked his sleeves, but his hands still plucked at the strings.

Aishn shook his head and protested, "What if the harp sucks you into playing it too if you get too close?"

"Why haven't you just logged out?" Danika asked Brannigan. "If you're willing to die to stop playing, what's the difference?"

"It says I won't be able to revive if I log out!" Brannigan complained bitterly. "And I've been stuck here for hours! I haven't even been able to send a message because my hands are tied to the harp!"

Aishin bent and offered a health potion to one of the fallen NPCs who hadn't died yet as he passed. The man pushed the potion away feebly and protested, "Please just let me rest."

Brannigan continued mournfully, "And the bloody idiot who answered my first verbal bug report told me that 'everything seems to be functioning normally' and that he couldn't see any reason to stop the harp because I 'agreed to play it'! And the rest of my reports have been ignored or something!"

"You agreed to play it?" Danika questioned curiously.

Brannigan shook his head. "It's a cursed harp. It's possessed by something that claims to be the spirit of a master bard," he explained reluctantly.

Danika asked, "Did it force you to when you touched it? What happened when you started playing?"

"I tried to play it dozens of times," he protested. "But it wouldn't make a sound! Then I got a cut and when I touched the harp it spoke to me suddenly. It promised to teach me to master the harp if I submitted to its test!" Brannigan exclaimed with angry embarrassment.